AUSTIN ARGOS

William E. Montgomery

AUSTIN ARGOS. The Austin Argos was founded in 1962 by a group of black Austin business and professional people. The chairman of the board of the corporation that owned the Argos was Everett Givens, an Austin physician. The corporation disbanded, and Mason Smith, a newspaper publisher from Detroit, bought out the other investors and became the sole proprietor. In 1971 Arthur Sims and his wife began helping Smith with the paper, and later that year Smith talked Sims into taking over as publisher. Sims and his wife published and edited the Argos until Mrs. Sims died in 1985. A year later Sims sold the paper to Charles Miles. The Austin Argos began as a tabloid-size weekly community newspaper. In 1978 Sims began publishing it as a broadsheet. It printed stories of general interest to the black community in Austin and Central Texas, featuring society news, church affairs, sports reports, political issues, and editorial comment. Through the 1970s the Argos carried facts and opinion on such subjects as the activities of the Ku Klux Klan, local black preachers, high prices for food in black neighborhoods, and the education of black students. At its peak the Argos published 5,600 copies of the newspaper that were distributed directly to subscribers through the mail and through local stores. The Argos eventually became the longest continuously published newspaper of its type produced by blacks in Texas.

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